Sunday, June 06, 2010

A YouTube Homeopath Cites POSITIVE Evidence

This guy on YouTube (I know...I know...picking the high fruit again, I am) who says he's a homeopath is trying to explain how it works. He's all up in James Randi's face and in the comments, a person calling him/herself "skeptic4life18" asks this guy (known, apparently, as either "JB" or "sloop987") to provide just one scientific study regarding homeopathy. In case you want to watch, here's the video (editor's note: the video has been "removed by the user" - perhaps he was embarrassed. I doubt it):JB responds by citing five meta analysis and a snarky comment as follows:

I wanted to see if his citations actually were as "POSITIVE" as he seems to think they are so here are the studies with the links to the pages and copied conclusions for you to check out. My emphasis is throughout.

Cucherat Et Al 2000 from the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology here:

Conclusions: There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies. Further high quality studies are needed to confirm these results.

Linde& Melchart 1998 from the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine here:

The results of the available randomized trials suggest that individualized homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence, however, is not convincing because of methodological shortcomings and inconsistencies.

The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition. Further research on homeopathy is warranted provided it is rigorous and systematic.

Boissel Et Al 1996 was not found anywhere as JB cited. The closest I could find at PubMed was the same study as the initial one cited above where Boissel was a co-author with Cucherat. Obviously the conclusion is the same.

At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias. This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials.

I find it amusing that every one of these says essentially, "Homeopathy might work, but these trials suck so we need more studies with better controls...oh, and the well-controlled studies we did see were negative." Not the best endorsement and hardly worthy of the label "POSITIVE".

4 Barbaric Yawps:

Funny, homeopaths seem incapable of reading the fucking summary's of trials. I took 10 hours earlier this year to carefully go through the studies cited in an essay by the head of a homopathy company here in Australia ( on a site that claimed homeopathy cures aids). It's the same shit, the either selectively quote, misread, or mislead.

I don't know if this homeopath is a member of the British Homeopthic Association but, whatever the case, he doesn;t seem to have read the BHA's definition of what homeopathy is: their description of the preparation of "remedies" using dilution and succussion, plus the idea that the greater the dilution the more potent the "remedy", tallies exactly with what James Randi, and other critics, say.

Things I Doubt: Ray Comfort & Kirk Cameron's ability to put together a decent argument...or a decent sandwich, for that matter; Oprah Winfrey's judgment about anything; Jenny McCarthy's anatomical conformity, by which I mean, I think she has neither a brain nor a heart; Jim Carrey's status as a Canadian - am I allowed to unilaterally decline that?; believers in acupuncture and their ability to accept that it is a fantasy; and the justness of a world where I am not rich for my truly amazing humor but Reality TV "stars" continue to rake in the cash.